Tooning out the truth
So, this is a bit of a liberty that i am taking, as this actually was published. Still, the editors somewhat tweaked up my final point, so i would appreciate any independent thoughts on it.
Tooning Out The Truth
What the cartoon coverage is ignoring about the real cause of the riots.
In much the same way that the original Danish cartoons caricatured the very real issues presented by the rise of fundamentalist Islam, the initial ensuing riots seemed a caricature of a fundamentalist response. But the underlying reasons for the initial protests were domestic to those countries and have almost nothing to do with Denmark. While some pundits in Europe and America have seized on these events as evidence of Islam’s incompatibility with liberal democracy, the truth is much more complicated. A survey of the countries that have seen violent protests shows that in many cases they were winked at – or led by – relatively secular, authoritarian regimes to direct popular dissatisfaction with their corrupt governance towards a European scapegoat.
The actual cartoons were produced back in September of last year, but only started causing turmoil after some particularly incensed Danish Muslims highlighted them in the Arab world and lobbied governments and the Islamic leadership. It was only once the pictures had been republished in an Egyptian daily that the furor started proper.
Arab reaction was prompt and violent, with widespread indignation, while the West’s reaction was to interpret the trouble as medieval Islamic obscurantism. These clichés swiftly transformed into self-fulfilling prophesies, further escalating the situation to the point where we are today, with people still marching – and sometimes dying – in the streets over cartoons that were published over four months ago.
To explain this uproar, it is instructive to look back at the first violent responses and explain their provenance.
The first aggressive and highly visible reaction in the Muslim world happened on January 30th when gunmen raided the European Union offices in Gaza and fired shots into the air outside. A closer analysis instead shows that these were in fact specifically Fatah gunmen who appeared in front of the delegation headquarters, rather than members of the newly elected Hamas party. This is an important distinction. Fatah is the older, and historically more secular, Palestinian political organization. Years of popular disgust with its kleptocratic rule culminated in the Hamas’ victory over it in the recent elections. Hamas, which is associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, has always been the more religious, more hardline, and more violent of the two parties.
Now consider an initial Hamas response to the troubles. One Hamas leader went so far as to go to a Christian church in Gaza and offer Hamas protection. This is not to say that the Fatah gunmen may not have felt offended by the cartoons, but it shows that there was another side to this protest – namely that Fatah may have been making a bid for greater popular legitimacy. The fact that the trouble did not escalate is likely testament to power wielded by the new Hamas leaders in the Palestinian Authority. Already aware of the inflammatory nature of their election, the last thing that Hamas leaders would have wanted would be the sacking of the offices of their main foreign donor. Subsequent rioting, where German and Danish offices were attacked in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, can be blamed as ripple effects from the continuing violence around the globe.
Such restraint was not on display days later in Damascus, Syria, where an inflamed crowd torched the building housing the Danish and Norwegian consulates. The international press immediately leapt upon this as the next result of the Danish cartoons, with widespread condemnation and pleas for calm.
However, journalists reporting from Damascus on the day of the violence were quoted as saying that people they had spoken to who were involved in the protests had never heard of the cartoons. On top of this, many saw the shadowy hand of the secret police, the Mukhabarat, behind the protests.
The truth is that Syria is a deeply secular country. The Ba’athist government that President Bashar Assad inherited at his father’s passing is one that has ruled the country with an iron fist for decades thanks to its stamping down on any dissent, especially troublemakers organized around religion. In 1982, President Hafez Assad responded to an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood by leveling the city of Hama, killing some 10,000 men, women, and children. Thousands more were imprisoned afterwards.
Consequently, it seems somewhat disingenuous for someone to draw the conclusion that President Assad would ever allow a protest organized around a religious theme to get so out of control to the point of torching buildings in the center of his capital city.
As if to emphasize this point, eyewitnesses were cited as reporting that men with walkie-talkies had been spotted directing the protesters. Ultimately, it benefited President Assad to focus Syrians rage on the foreign consulates: in this way they would both be distracted from the fact of his autocratic rule, and he would be seen to be burnishing his Muslim credentials.
Seemingly like wildfire, the rioting then spread to the Lebanese capital Beirut, where protestors sacked the buildings housing the Danish consulate there. Some blamed the trouble on Syrian agitators and police subsequently arrested some 200 people, of whom 76 were Syrian nationals.
At this point, the powder keg had been lit, and trouble started to flare up as Muslim extremists leapt upon the bandwagon around the globe. In some cases, the causes of the troubles were echoes of the trouble in Syria where the secular government pandered to extremists to divert from other troubles. While in others genuine expressions of rage against the publication of the cartoons were hijacked by agitators for other aims.
Either way, the lesson learned is that the root causes of the troubles were more complex than rage at the original Danish cartoons. Unfortunately, given the initial responses on both sides, the situation has now escalated beyond anyone’s control. As the Iranians assume the same posture they took during the Rushdie affair in 1989, Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” theory that was the first knee-jerk response to the Danish cartoons seems to be coming to fruition.
The irony for the West is that to allow the situation to degenerate simply reinforces the extremists’ hand. The real solution lies within Professor Samuel Huntington’s original thesis “to support in other civilizations groups sympathetic to Western values and interests.” In other words, to foster free and democratic societies rather than totalitarian regimes that need to pander to religious extremism in order to stay in office. To avoid such vitriol in the future, the West needs to take steps now to fertilize the barren ground in the Islamic world that is currently ripe for extremists.
Tooning Out The Truth
What the cartoon coverage is ignoring about the real cause of the riots.
In much the same way that the original Danish cartoons caricatured the very real issues presented by the rise of fundamentalist Islam, the initial ensuing riots seemed a caricature of a fundamentalist response. But the underlying reasons for the initial protests were domestic to those countries and have almost nothing to do with Denmark. While some pundits in Europe and America have seized on these events as evidence of Islam’s incompatibility with liberal democracy, the truth is much more complicated. A survey of the countries that have seen violent protests shows that in many cases they were winked at – or led by – relatively secular, authoritarian regimes to direct popular dissatisfaction with their corrupt governance towards a European scapegoat.
The actual cartoons were produced back in September of last year, but only started causing turmoil after some particularly incensed Danish Muslims highlighted them in the Arab world and lobbied governments and the Islamic leadership. It was only once the pictures had been republished in an Egyptian daily that the furor started proper.
Arab reaction was prompt and violent, with widespread indignation, while the West’s reaction was to interpret the trouble as medieval Islamic obscurantism. These clichés swiftly transformed into self-fulfilling prophesies, further escalating the situation to the point where we are today, with people still marching – and sometimes dying – in the streets over cartoons that were published over four months ago.
To explain this uproar, it is instructive to look back at the first violent responses and explain their provenance.
The first aggressive and highly visible reaction in the Muslim world happened on January 30th when gunmen raided the European Union offices in Gaza and fired shots into the air outside. A closer analysis instead shows that these were in fact specifically Fatah gunmen who appeared in front of the delegation headquarters, rather than members of the newly elected Hamas party. This is an important distinction. Fatah is the older, and historically more secular, Palestinian political organization. Years of popular disgust with its kleptocratic rule culminated in the Hamas’ victory over it in the recent elections. Hamas, which is associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, has always been the more religious, more hardline, and more violent of the two parties.
Now consider an initial Hamas response to the troubles. One Hamas leader went so far as to go to a Christian church in Gaza and offer Hamas protection. This is not to say that the Fatah gunmen may not have felt offended by the cartoons, but it shows that there was another side to this protest – namely that Fatah may have been making a bid for greater popular legitimacy. The fact that the trouble did not escalate is likely testament to power wielded by the new Hamas leaders in the Palestinian Authority. Already aware of the inflammatory nature of their election, the last thing that Hamas leaders would have wanted would be the sacking of the offices of their main foreign donor. Subsequent rioting, where German and Danish offices were attacked in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, can be blamed as ripple effects from the continuing violence around the globe.
Such restraint was not on display days later in Damascus, Syria, where an inflamed crowd torched the building housing the Danish and Norwegian consulates. The international press immediately leapt upon this as the next result of the Danish cartoons, with widespread condemnation and pleas for calm.
However, journalists reporting from Damascus on the day of the violence were quoted as saying that people they had spoken to who were involved in the protests had never heard of the cartoons. On top of this, many saw the shadowy hand of the secret police, the Mukhabarat, behind the protests.
The truth is that Syria is a deeply secular country. The Ba’athist government that President Bashar Assad inherited at his father’s passing is one that has ruled the country with an iron fist for decades thanks to its stamping down on any dissent, especially troublemakers organized around religion. In 1982, President Hafez Assad responded to an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood by leveling the city of Hama, killing some 10,000 men, women, and children. Thousands more were imprisoned afterwards.
Consequently, it seems somewhat disingenuous for someone to draw the conclusion that President Assad would ever allow a protest organized around a religious theme to get so out of control to the point of torching buildings in the center of his capital city.
As if to emphasize this point, eyewitnesses were cited as reporting that men with walkie-talkies had been spotted directing the protesters. Ultimately, it benefited President Assad to focus Syrians rage on the foreign consulates: in this way they would both be distracted from the fact of his autocratic rule, and he would be seen to be burnishing his Muslim credentials.
Seemingly like wildfire, the rioting then spread to the Lebanese capital Beirut, where protestors sacked the buildings housing the Danish consulate there. Some blamed the trouble on Syrian agitators and police subsequently arrested some 200 people, of whom 76 were Syrian nationals.
At this point, the powder keg had been lit, and trouble started to flare up as Muslim extremists leapt upon the bandwagon around the globe. In some cases, the causes of the troubles were echoes of the trouble in Syria where the secular government pandered to extremists to divert from other troubles. While in others genuine expressions of rage against the publication of the cartoons were hijacked by agitators for other aims.
Either way, the lesson learned is that the root causes of the troubles were more complex than rage at the original Danish cartoons. Unfortunately, given the initial responses on both sides, the situation has now escalated beyond anyone’s control. As the Iranians assume the same posture they took during the Rushdie affair in 1989, Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” theory that was the first knee-jerk response to the Danish cartoons seems to be coming to fruition.
The irony for the West is that to allow the situation to degenerate simply reinforces the extremists’ hand. The real solution lies within Professor Samuel Huntington’s original thesis “to support in other civilizations groups sympathetic to Western values and interests.” In other words, to foster free and democratic societies rather than totalitarian regimes that need to pander to religious extremism in order to stay in office. To avoid such vitriol in the future, the West needs to take steps now to fertilize the barren ground in the Islamic world that is currently ripe for extremists.
posted by Raff @ 7:03 PM
2 Comments:
At 5:02 PM,
Anonymous said…
Very nice job, Raff, you make some excellent points. By way of constructive criticism, I find your conclusion a little disappointing due to its vagueness. You assert that the West cannot assume a secular government will not use religious extremism to foster its own political ends. The other side of the coin seems to be that a religous government (Hammas) with political legitimacy may be the lesser of two evils, no? I wish you had tied this in at the end, if, indeed, it is the point you were driving at - "fertilizing barren ground" doesn't conjure much by way of a concrete position.
At 11:21 AM,
Raff said…
The conclusion was not one that i had really reached. I think you are right that it is flawed. The criticisms aimed at religious or secular governments are very specific to the instances in which they are found, rather than sweeping statements. My statement about the region as a whole is that the West needs to carefully assess each situation on its own merit, rather than reaching sweeping conclusions.
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